EMPLOYEE DISCONNECTION POLICIES AND CONDO CORPORATIONS On April 11, 2022, Ontario’s new Working for Workers Act,
BY JOSH MILGROM
2021 received royal assent, which introduced many employee-friendly changes to the Employment Standards Act, 2000. The Minister of Labour declared that the changes would “require most workplaces to have a right to disconnect policy.” The government’s boastful statements could understandably make an employer— and condo directors, owners and residents—worry that their employees or service providers, including management, were about to become completely unreachable outside their scheduled work hours. Well, not quite.
Right to a Disconnection Policy, but no Right to Disconnect The new rules don’t actually give employees a right to disconnect. In fact, they don’t give employees any new rights to refuse work or ignore work communications. Instead, the new rules require some employers to simply have “a written policy in place for all employees with respect to disconnecting from work.”
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Employers are essentially free to determine the content of their disconnection policies for themselves. The only requirements are that the policy must: (i) address disconnecting from work. (ii) include the date the policy was prepared. (iii) include the date any changes were made to the policy.
